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The customer pays the distributor, except during price wars, close to a fair price for milk. In cases where milk becomes Gold Seal, Gold Crest, or Zilch Farms Special, on the way through the plant, by virtue of a fancy closure, a point or two of butterfat, the customer pays too much. AAA auditors reported that New England's potent H. P. Hood & Sons, biggest N. E. distributor had, for five years return 25% on capital invested after all charges, paid company officers up to $75,000 a year.
All attempts to regulate this unsavoury mess have uniformly fizzled leaving the, regulator with little but a terrific headache for his pains as Secretary Wallace or the administrative officer of any State control board will testify. Only possible solution: a partial about face by the zealous medics, admitting that pasteurization is not absolutely perfect, permitting enough high grade, locally produced milk to be sold raw to set a standard of what fresh milk should be, let the customer do the rest. Possibility of this occurring in the near future—nil. . . .
WILFRED C. DUNN Rowley, Mass.
Rehash
Sirs:
Had Catalogue been listed at $1.00, under or at most a buck and a half; and had you not given it nearly an entire column in your Sept. 14 issue I probably wouldn't be so inquisitive now.
Magazine readers as well as the elephant, rarely ever forget a story. I am not accusing Author George Milburn of gross plagiarism for he might also be the writer of the two stories that were recalled to my mind when reading your review, p. 90-91. But if he is the same, I believe that the public should be told of the "rehash" before paying $2.00 for the story.
The part of the story told on the first page, regarding arrival of the catalogues, what everyone ordered, the subsequent burning and reordering, I read possibly five years ago in one of the national magazines. I am sorry that memory fails me on that point, but after all there is some limitation to the extent that grey matter can be accurate.
The section, however, regarding the taxi driver, Red Currie's Sizzle Pants, the murder, death of Spike's child, in fact—and I haven't read your version at all—I'd wager a sum that the murder was committed by a boy, blind with fury and fear, with a shotgun because he found a pair of undies that belonged to his gal in Spike's taxi. She had received them that day from the mail order house, her old man had confiscated them and they fell into the victim's possession when he asked the gal's old man for a grease rag. . . .
I am unable to remember where I read the first, but the latter appeared last winter in a copy of The Southern Review, literary publication of the Louisiana State University. . . .
I think I'll get drunk with my two bucks.
A. G. WEEMS
The Commercial Appeal Memphis, Tenn.
Had Reader Weems a truly elephantine memory he might have recalled that the magazine short stories which reminded him of George Milburn's Catalogue were written by George Milburn.
Like many another novelist, Author Milburn sold fragments of his book to Harper's, Collier's, Esquire, The Southern Review.—ED.
Voice of Roosevelt
Sirs: